


Behind Every King is a Queen with a Knife

by DevinePhoenix



Series: Forgotten Snippets from my Plot Farm [1]
Category: K (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon Compliant, Crack Treated Seriously, Gen, Queerplatonic Relationships, Worldbuilding, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-14 06:43:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28916298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DevinePhoenix/pseuds/DevinePhoenix
Summary: People had particular roles to play within their Clans.There was the King, of course, the center of the clan. They were the leader and the source of all the powers.There was a second in command, the ones who supported their kings with managing their operations and guiding the rest of the clan.There were other informal roles, like the vanguard or information specialist or the ones who were best at combat.But the role that was just as important to the health of the clan was that of the Queen.
Relationships: Fushimi Saruhiko & Munakata Reishi, Suoh Mikoto & Totsuka Tatara
Series: Forgotten Snippets from my Plot Farm [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2147145
Comments: 2
Kudos: 30





	Behind Every King is a Queen with a Knife

**Author's Note:**

> Basically for new years, I decided to go through my massive plot farm word document. To my surprise I had 10+ WIPs that were basically finished but I had just left unposted because 'eh, it still needs a little more'. but when I read them over, I realized that If I had the push of an event deadline guiding me, I would've already posted them. So for my New Year's Resolution, I'm gonna post most, if not all of them. 
> 
> Also once again, I just tend to spit out words and then not reread properly so there's probably errors. Please feel free to call me out over anything weird you spot. I'm almost certain the tenses are a mess but eh I'll fix it later. Also the Gold King's name is somehow immensely rejected by my brain so I feel like I've misspelled it alot.

Suoh Mikoto thanked every day of his life for the absolute miracle that is his Queen.

It was a miracle he found his Queen at all. It wasn’t unheard of for a King to never find their match, the Gold King had been Queenless his entire reign after all. For other sanctums, the urgency of finding their Queen wasn’t as pressing. For the Red sanctum however, finding their Queen was a matter of life or death.

Ever since the sanctum of the Third King first manifested decades ago and the first Red clan was created, the first crowned Queen of the Red came to power not long after.

Like how the term ‘King’ was not consider gender-specific with Aura users, the term ‘Queen’ was also considered genderless. It was not in the traditional sense, a title given to the King’s romantic partner. For Aura users it was a title that denoted a role in the clan much like the second-in-command or lieutenant. The clan Queen was the member of the clan that balanced the king, in temperament and power. They were the person that kept the King’s Weismann levels stable.

In the beginning the clans didn’t quite know what to make of this or why a Queen was needed at all. There hadn’t been a case of a King’s power overloading or a Queen dying before their King for many long decades since the King system began. Then the Kagetsu Crater incident occurred where a Queen-less Kagetsu Genji’s powers got so unstable that his sword of Damocles fell and rearranged the landscape. After that the well beings of Queens became the top priority and a clause was added to the law of no serious combat between Kings.

However, the main problem was that not every King found a Queen that could anchor them.

Suoh Mikoto had the good fortune to have a Queen so necessary that he found him long before he even manifested as the Red King. A bright sunshine boy that followed behind him like a duckling, chirping at him with a cheerful cry of ‘King!’ long before he gained his crown. Kusanagi and Mikoto could never figure out how he knew.

(Totsuka meets the Colourless king as a boy, and even though he was young he never forgets the directions the man gives him)

(Miwa Ichigen tells the future Red Queen to go find his King, because the alternative of the most violent sanctum without its Queen is a recipe far too close to the Kagetsu Crater incident)

Izumo is his first clansman, and his second-in-command but he’s furthest thing from calming. The two of them have always egged each other one since they were children. He’d never mistake his bastard of a brother from another mother as anything approaching ‘calming’.

Instead it is Totsuka, kind gentle and absolutely no-good-in-a-fight Totsuka, that is his Red Queen. It makes almost poetic sense to him. Though the Third sanctum is raging and unruly, his Queen by his side keeps it calm. Most of Totsuka’s aura is used to pacify Mikoto, so it was rare that he could even squeeze a slight manifestation of his own powers into something visible. He would never have the firepower to last in a clan fight, but he made up for that lack with a razor-edged control that made his power more useful in fine applications.

The Red Queens had always been exceptionally fragile like that. Most of their powers were tied up with keeping their notoriously unstable King pacified. Of all the Queens, they were the most vulnerable. Thankfully, though the Queen was a King’s weak point, no sane clan would ever go after them for fear of retaliation against their own Queen or provoking another Damocles Down. The Gold King had even decreed it into Law, there would be no purposeful attacks on Queens.

(Of course, the greens who had no fear of the Gold and their laws were the first to break it and target the weakest and most vulnerable Queen)

Totsuka also has the dubious privilege of being the only Active Queen when he took rank.

The Gold King had never chosen a Queen in all his reign. Rumour said he was too powerful and controlled to need such a thing. (Adolf and Daikaku just know that his Queen died on a cold winter’s day in Dresden before Daikaku could even take his throne)(Serious and overly down to earth Daikoku had loved free-spirited optimistic Claudia just as much as her brother and her loss had gutted them both)

The Silver King had also never taken a clansman, much less a Queen. (Years and years later, he laughs his head off when he realizes he struck gold almost instantly with his first two clanmen. He doesn’t need a Queen for his powers, which are stable as the pull of gravity. When he does need a Queen for, is to keep him from wandering, to keep him down to the earth.)

After the Kagetsu Crater had taken down three Kings, their clans and their Queens, there weren’t a lot of living clans in general still around.

Blue hadn’t even chosen a King at that point. Jin Habari’s Queen was still living, but without a King and with their level of injuries and trauma they couldn’t be considered ‘active’.

Green let very little information be known about itself and barely had any known clan members much less the Queen. Only the King’s name was known and that was mostly because of his _spectacular_ introduction to the Gold King.

The Gray king or clan didn’t even exist anymore. It was yet another clan that had been annihilated by Kagetsu to the extent that even the King’s body, assumed to be near the epicenter as he tried to stop Kagetsu, was never found.

The Colourless King and clan were highly reclusive, they stayed out of most clan matters. The king himself only stepped in for peacekeeping and negotiations between kings. The clan itself only consisted of his two adopted children. The Queen of the colourless was Miwa Ichigen’s adopted son who balanced his future-seeing father by keeping him focused on the present. They were rarely present in the city so as a whole that clan could barely be considered ‘active’.

It was difficult for Totsuka to get used to the change in respect after his ‘crowning’. To be quite honest, he wasn’t a fighter and had gotten beaten up, threatened and insulted a fair share of times from rival gangs. Respect was something that King got, not him. However now when the Gold King called for an audience, he was now also called with his King. For all the Kings had some territorial squabbling and Alpha posturing amongst themselves, they never touched on each other’s Queens or lack thereof in their fights.

Totsuka had always liked the old man; he was very old and traditional and that translated to an almost chivalric attitude to the Queens. No matter if they were a fighting queen or not, the Gold King gave them just as much respect as he gave the Kings. Sometimes he even gave them more respect considering the Kings squabbled like children and tore up his city and often needed to be smacked but Totsuka and Yatogami Kuroh were quiet and well-behaved.

Then Fushimi started to accompany the Blue King, in unofficial capacity of course, but everyone present could tell he was the Blue Queen. The Gold King treated the ruder Queen with just as much gentle gravitas that he treated the others and Totsuka wasn’t surprised to see Fushimi’s constant bristling sooth somewhat. The Gold King really was that good.

His face was stern, but his eyes were very kind and he was nothing but gentle to Totsuka. That sort of chivalric attitude was even carried on by the Blues, which was surprising since they had such a big grudge against the Reds. Even with the enmity, the currently Kingless Blues of Scepter 4 would go out of their way to be polite and escort him out of trouble when they were patrolling. Before a new Blue King was crowned, they mainly stuck to patrols and skirmishes rather than outright quarrels with the Red clan that had a king to back them up. It wasn’t hard to see that they still held a grudge considering how the last Red and Blue Kings died.

Sometimes, among those Blues, he would see a Blue with a massive scar on his face and a missing arm watch him with sadness from afar. The man never stuck around for long though, one of the other Blues would appear before long and escort him away with the same gravitas and protectiveness they treated Totsuka with.

(Goki Zenjou had been a good Queen, his clan assures him. A good Queen that their King would be proud of right until the end. He had fulfilled his King’s final wish and no one of the remaining blue clan could fault him.)

(He blamed himself and his damn instincts that made him move faster than his own brain.)

When the new Blue King was appointed, the old blue clan stepped aside gracefully. They had held out for ten long years without a king and most of them were quite glad at that point to retire to less taxing desk jobs. They were stressed, overworked and not to mentioned traumatized. They had very little time to internalize the whole Kagetsu Incident where they lost half their members AND their King.

They had distracted themselves through work and trying to keep Japan’s peace, even running at half capacity. Work kept them busy, but they also had their broken Queen to look after, and that was what kept them together after the Incident. No one could quite imagine how he felt after being forced to kill his King, his best friend. Aside from the mental trauma, Zenjou had been horribly injured and in a fragile state for long, long afterwards. Even after his limping physical recovery, they couldn’t help but dote on their Queen. (They all know that Zenjou could hand them their spleens for breakfast, even with only one arm. He’s their strongest after all. But he’s always been emotionally dense and hard to read, and they don’t want to wake up one day to find that their Queen has killed himself)

They were honestly surprised that the new Blue King didn’t dismiss them all, to prevent threats to his new reign. He was no Habari, that was for sure. For all they shared the sanctum of order, they had drastically different personalities and methods. Somehow that made it easier for the old blue clan to accept. This king was not _their_ king, but he carried their blue nonetheless so they would not rebel.

For all his sly and plotting ways, Munakata Reisei was a very honourable man. He gave the old Blues the respect and honour they deserved and treated their Queen well. For a bunch of traumatized has-beens, they could live with that.

Of course, then they met the new Blue Queen and they had never felt so amused in their lives. It was worth sticking around to see this drama play out! It made some of them fondly recall the days of Zenjou’s wild youth alongside Habari. The new Blue Queen was never officially announced, but the old Blues could tell all the same.

The Queen of the Blue was not strict Lieutenant Awashima, brave and no-nonsense. It was not Akiyama, the straightforward and responsible leader of the swords team. It was not quiet and clever Enomoto of intelligence.

The Queen of the Blue was crowned in a quiet Scepter 4 vowing ceremony in the rain. They took the oath and sword just like any other blue clansman. Right up until the Blue crackled _just-so_ and Munakata suddenly _knew_.

With a crackle of red still running on his shoulder, Fushimi Saruhiko looked up with startled eyes to meet Munakata’s smug ones.

Fushimi was in no place mentally to be a Queen, still emotionally wounded and hurting inside, and Munakata was too wary to broadcast the identity of his Queen anyway. The protection his Queen would gain from being known would not outweigh the threat they both would face if the Green clan knew his identity. The Green clan didn’t give a damn about the treaties and the laws, if their enemy had a weakness, they wouldn’t hesitate to take advantage.

During the Initiation ceremony, that extra spark and crackle of ice was subtle, easily missed. In the end, without speaking a word to each other on the matter, neither of them announced it to anyone and it remained a secret kept between them. Even without the support of an official title, his Queen rose up in the ranks at a rapid rate to become his third in the span of a year and a half.

They never spoke the words aloud or acknowledged their connection, but after a fight with the Reds or a stressful day, Fushimi would come to his office all the same to quietly support his King.

When his sword of Damocles finally started to break, Munakata sent his own Queen on a suicidal mission. He doesn’t pose it as one, because he would never say one word when twenty and a metaphor would do, but his Queen sees right through his bullshit as he always does. Fushimi just studied him with calm eyes, clicked his tongue and agreed without hesitation. Though he would never admit it, they truly were a pair.

He had seen the state of Zenjou and he had no wish to end up like that. Alive but forever mourning and damaged somewhere deep inside. And though it was his unspoken duty as a Queen to end his King if his sword fell, he was not selfless enough to try and prevent a Damocles Down disaster. He’d much rather die with his king and Munakata knew that.

(Zenjou watches them from afar with nostalgia. It was not a broadcasted or well-known thing, but Blue Queens would much rather let the world burn and die with their Kings. He had been just the same, but his King had commanded, and his body had moved on instinct without his permission.)

So, they have a fake roaring argument and Fushimi slips away to join JUNGLE and Munakata is removed from duty. It is not one of their best months but they savour it, separated as they are, because they had both planned for it to be their last.

(Behind each other’s back, they have made plans to save each other but not themselves)

Munakata is the King of Order, he is no Red King with a powerful force of chaos under his skin grasping for control and calm. His Queen is not meant to calm or contain a raging sanctum. His Queen, the Queen of Blue, is a force of chaos and flight and trickery. For all the Blue Queen falls under the blue sanctum of order, they have always been a wild breed to keep their Kings from being mired in stagnation. With how their aura functioned, they were the complete opposite from the fragility of the Red Queens.

The Blue doesn’t need calm, it needs to be roused and urged to movement. The Blue is like Ice, it resists movement but when it gets going it becomes the unstoppable slow advance of a glacier. The King is the vast sheets of ice, immense but immobile, the Queen is the one that makes that ice move and turn it into a glacier. Like Zenjou can attest, the Blue Queen is a true chess Queen, one of the most powerful pieces on the board.

The more unruly and violent a sanctum is, the more passive the matching Queen is. Much like the Gray Queen, the Blue Queen is a fighting Queen.

For all Fushimi denies his attachment, he really is the heart of SCEPTER 4. Without him, the whole operation grinds to a halt. Something that was quickly proven when he was undercover in JUNGLE. Without their Queen, all the processes and paperwork and programs fell into a mess. Fushimi was not as combat focused as the previous Blue Queens but his devastating talent lies in intelligence and computers and logistics to an almost supernatural degree.

He’s snappy and constantly irritated with something or the other, but the Blue clan loves him anyway. He bristles and picks fights and can’t take a compliment to save his life, but the clan has learnt to read his language. He would quarrel and yell and click his teeth, but he’d make small subtle actions of care, from quietly adjusted patrol schedules to putting a cup of coffee by someone’s table while they were in the bathroom.

Fushimi for all his bluster has a kind heart, but that heart had been stomped on and twisted and long ago been conditioned to let no one else in to save himself more pain. He’s emotionally fragile and the Blue Clan is not about to push too hard and too fast like HOMRA and risk another blow-up. They dance around his boundaries and show their care in whatever ways Fushimi can bring himself to accept.

It isn’t until he’s hauled out of JUNGLE’s headquarters, bleeding and haggard and his clan starts to panic and fuss around him that it truly hits him how much the clan actually cares for him through the professionalism. Though he was never outwardly declared the Blue Queen, they’ve always subconsciously treated him as one. A specific sort of behavioral pattern encouraged by their aura to help blue clansmen deal with their exceptionally volatile, wild stray cats of a Blue Queen. This generations’ Queen just so happened to be an _abused_ stray cat but all it did was make their instincts ping twice as hard.

(Zenjou laughs off in a corner as he watches the absolutely poleaxed expression on the young Blue Queen’s face)

Munakata himself, hauls up his baffled, exhausted Queen to carry him to the medical truck nearby. What clansmen that aren’t in the middle of sorting out the crisis do their own hovering outside the truck as their Queen gets patched up.

Fushimi was not in the best of shape, underweight and exhausted and bleeding heavily from a thigh wound. If he hadn’t been a clansman and a Queen, it was likely that he would’ve bled out before he reached the surface again. He passes out on the operating table and it drives the Blue clan into an even greater frenzy.

In the days following, the Blue and Red clans wrangle the situation as best as they can. The Blue clan is particularly irate at the perceived challenge to their order and fights back twice as ferociously to get the strains under control. They quietly do not mention the grudge they all have about how their, now official, Queen had nearly died under the Green clan.

Fushimi spends several days delirious in the infirmary. His body was in no position to fight off the infection. On the tenth day, he limps out under the power of his stubbornness to give his report.

In this post-king world, with the loss of their King’s Sanctum, the Clan Queens were now the strongest players on the board. It just so happened that none of the Queens had any sort of personality or will to lead and override their Kings.

The Silver Queen, Yatogami Kuroh would much rather follow his king into an obscure and peaceful life.

The bemused new Red Queen that was Kusanagi would much rather continue parenting his princess turned King and make sure she had some time to enjoy life and grow up. As the now oldest in the pack of HOMRA, he had teenagers and young adults to wrangle and look after. Anna had been an exceptionally calm Red King, so in response, the Red had had it’s first ever fighting Queen, brief as his official tenure had been.

The Blue Queen Fushimi Saruhiko would much rather stay by his King’s side, wrestling the nation into order. They may not have a King’s power anymore but the Blue still beat in their chest so they would continue to fight to keep the chaos of the Strains contained.

The Green Queen, Yukari vanished after the fall of his king but from what little glimpses they got at him through the camera network, he looked like he was more concerned with taking care of his younger clansman than starting up another vendetta anew.

The Slate of Damocles is blown to powder and the King’s sanctums with it but there are still strains in the world. There are still clans to deal with them.

There are still the Queens.

**Author's Note:**

> First off, there's nothing inherently sexy about the Kings and Queens relationships. It's just a strong relationship. Were Mikoto and Totsuka fucking? It's up to you. But I read most of these king/queen groupings as queerplatonic or parental or just ride and die. I adore the Fushimi&Munakata bastard dynamic in case you couldn't tell but I don't really see them as romantic. ofc, i've left everything vague so yall can make your own decisions about everyone's relationships. 
> 
> Secondly, yeah the title refers to Fushimi.
> 
> With the ending, I’m implying that though the Kings lost the power with the slate, the Queens sorta acted as a backup hub to save enough power that the clans and the Queens can still function with their aura powers. The same thing happened when the Blues had not King for a full ten years. Zenjou acted as the wellspring of the Blue Sanctum in place of the King instead. So technically, there will be no new Kings and clans after this set but they still have enough powers to deal with the Strains remaining in the world. Because I always thought it was a terrible idea that what was essentially the police force lost all their powers while the strains grew in numbers and strength. There was no way that was gonna end well.


End file.
